


i'll keep you company

by bemusedlybespectacled (ardentintoxication)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Horror, Tragedy, basically it's really sad and really creepy, because that's how I had to write my first Rumbelle fic, obviously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-10-21
Packaged: 2017-11-16 18:53:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardentintoxication/pseuds/bemusedlybespectacled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt by notawallet: "DARE! Try and write in no more than 300 words, the saddest Rumbelle fic known to man." Oops.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll keep you company

**Author's Note:**

> Some creepy shit happens, but I don't want to ruin the surprise, so please, go to the endnotes if you want tags (which are spoilerly). Title is from "Dark Waltz" by Hayley Westenra.

Time is meaningless when you are immortal, and even more meaningless without her, but even Rumpelstiltskin knows that it is four months and thirteen days after Belle leaves him that she comes back, appearing one morning in a crumpled heap on his doorstep.

She is changed, of course. Her skin is torn by the whips and scourges of clerics, and there is dried blood on her tattered gown. She's lost the rosy bloom in her cheeks, which are more sunken now. Her eyes are glassy, and her hair limp and greasy, but she came back.

He carries her to his workshop, and reverently he washes the blood from her wounds, stitches them closed with his finest thread, and places her where she belongs - not in the dungeon, and not in the small but comfortable bedroom she had as his caretaker, but his own bedroom, on his own bed.

She does not speak, and she does not move.

He magics clothing and hair for her, helps her to move with spells designed to grant grace and dexterity, and they share the dance they always wanted together but never had the chance to have. They wheel around the dance floor, he on his light and nimble feet and she buoyed by his magic, and he feels almost insanely happy that she is in his arms again. He kisses her, and her lips are cold.

He cares, a little, that she doesn't respond, but it's all right. He deserves it, for being such a brute to her and then casting her out (she was innocent, he knows that now). He took her love for him, pure and whole, and threw it back in her face a broken thing. He deserves what he has - a broken and lifeless body, and nothing more than that.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic features major character death, implied necrophilia, and lots of creepy shit involving dead bodies. Basically.


End file.
